HND Project Week 30

HND Project Week 30
I have started working on the final level for the game which is a Gothic style city called Ichorsford. One of the first things that i started working on was the cathedral which is the final boss arena. Much like many other structures in my game, it was built by grouping up geometric object such as cubes and cones.

 Inside the cathedral, there are 3 large enemies that are the bosses of the level. Also in the cathedral are several rows of seats that can be used block the bosses from reaching the player.

 The seats inside the cathedral are made from small boxes inside unreal engine. I originally created a model for the seats that is shown below. However when i imported the model into the game, and applied a texture, it would be a solid colour. This made it difficult to differentiate the angles of the model. I believe  this is because the i didn't use the UV mapping. However i believe that the one made inside UE4 are much more appealing because they are more simple and effective
Model created in blender

Seats in unreal

 To bind the player to the level, there several house that make up the boundaries. Some are inaccessible and are boarded up so that the player cant access them. One has multiple floors and enemies and some have nothing in.

 To restore the player's health, i have used the same type of trigger box that is used in the other levels. However to get to it on this level, the player must fight multiple enemies at once.

 I have also created a clock tower to break up the level a bit rather than it just being brick houses.

HND Project Week 29

HND Project Week 29

Since i have changed my idea to a 3rd person shooter, i needed to create a weapon system that allows me to shoot projectiles to damage enemies and to switch between several weapons.

This set of code makes it so that the weapon variables such as ammo count and fire rate are stored when changing between them. It also spawns a particle effect to signify a change in weapon. To make the weapon fire it spawns a projectile at a velocity that will propel it forward and will do a certain amount of damage on impact. The left mouse button is to make the gun shoot.

 A piece of code called get aim transform makes it so that the projectile spawned in the same direction that the camera is pointing. This created a problem where you could shoot your self because the player model didn't face the same direction as the camera.
This blueprint makes it so that the actor follows wherever the camera points. This is a bad fix as it makes the character follow the camera wherever it is pointed. Foe example if the player looks at the ground, the actor is rotated so that the whole
body faces the floor.

To restore a players health i have created a trigger volume that sets the current player health to 100 which is the maximum.

HND Project Week 28

HND Project Week 28

Several weeks i mentioned that i had changed parts of the forest to make it less dense, this week the forest has now been completed and, in my opinion, looks alright. The main feature of this is the little village with houses, enemies and a large tree ion the middle.

 The houses for the village were made from simple geometry pieces in unreal that have been grouped together to form a single house. I could have made these in blender however, a problem that would occur would be that the scale may be off. For example if the doorways are too small, i would have to keep  importing the same model after it had been changed. This also means that i don't have to worry about making a house model that is not optimised and causing performance dip in game.

In the centre of the forest map, there is a large tree that enemies patrol around. After progressing through the level, there is a large hole in the ground which leads to the boss arena. 

 The boss arena is located in an underground cave and after killing the boss, the player is teleported to the beginning of the forest level so that they can return to the hub and travel to the other level.

Boss in boss arena

Player start in boss arena

Also, since the game design was changed to be a third person shooter, i would need to create a projectile for my gun to fire. The projectile was created in blender and, in my opinion, is one the nicer looking models that i have created. To make aiming easier when playing the game, i have added a pseudo first person camera that can be switched to using right mouse button. This was done by adding a another camera and disabling the current camera when the button is pressed

HND Project Week 27

HND Project Week 27

Recently i have been rethinking my plans for this game. Originally it was meant to be a third person melee fighting game much like dark souls. However i have decided to change to a third person shooter instead. There are several reasons for this one being that i do not have the skill or knowledge to animate weapon animations. Another reason for this change is that it is much simpler. This however will not affect the game play much as the enemies can be given higher run speed or more damage to compensate. Therefore from this point on, the project will be a third person shooter.

My plan going forward is to have two weapon slots, one will be a small, high powered slug shotgun and the other will be a lower powered full auto Assault Rifle. I have already made the shotgun model and is currently the main weapon for the player.

The plan for the forest area was to have a section of it be dark because of the tree cover. However this didn't work properly. There were too many trees which cast too many shadows. This resulted in the lighting not being built when building the lightning. Therefore i have redone the forest to have fewer trees and be less dense. This will also improve performance for lower end computers.

HND Project Week 26

HND Project Week 26
This week i have been working on creating more armour for the main character. I have created the model for the greaves, boots and arm plates. These were made in Blender by manipulating a base torus shape. These Again will be attached to the player character by using sockets. For example the greaves will be attached to the leg bones of the default character.

Also i have made some tweaks to the main Hub. Before, the hub was a floating island with a castle that teleported the player to the other levels. The castle has stayed however i have changed it so that there is no longer a floating island. This is because the way i made the floating island looked strange because it was two landscapes on top of each other. This meant that there were parts where the landscapes clipped through each other and it didn't look too great.

Therefore i have made several changes to the Hub. First i have removed the floating islands and have replaced it with a normal landscape. The jumping puzzle is still there however, i have changed it so that instead of falling into the abyss, there is a lava pool that if fallen into, will reset the player to the start of the Hub. I think it looks much better this way as there are no clipping assets.

Old Hub

 New Hub